Hill's Pet Nutrition dry food added to recall

NEW YORK (CNN) -- The wet pet food recall that has killed at least 14 animals and sickened hundreds extended into the dry pet food market Friday.

Hill's Pet Nutrition announced a voluntary recall of Prescription Diet m/d Feline dry food as a precaution because it may contain a hazardous chemical that was identified earlier Friday by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to be associated with a broader recall of over 90 types of wet, cat and dog food.

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Dr. Stephen Sundlof, director of the FDA's Center for Veterinary Medicine, and Dr. Donald Smith, a veterinarian from Cornell University, said an independent lab identified melamine as the toxic agent found in the urine and kidneys of a dead cat and several sick ones after eating the wet pet food recalled earlier this month.

The melamine was found in wheat gluten, a pet food additive that was imported from China. Melamine is a chemical used to make fertilizers and plastic utensils.

"The association between melamine in the kidneys and urine in the cats that died and what was in the food they consumed is undeniable," Smith said at a news conference.

Hill's Pet Nutrition bought wheat gluten for the recalled dry food from the same China-based company that Menu Foods Inc. (Charts) purchased the additive.

Menu Foods, the Ontario-based manufacturer of the toxic pet food, FDA officials and Hill's Pet Nutrition would release the name of the company in China that provided the melamine-tainted additive.

Executives of Menu Foods told reporters Friday that it has ceased doing business with the company in China and that it would compensate consumers whose pets suffered from the recalled products.

There was heightened concern after the news that the toxic substance was in wheat gluten, because it is also a common additive in foods consumed by people.

Menu Foods uses the same standards for wheat gluten in its pet foods as other suppliers use for human foods, said Randall Copeland, executive vice president of sales and marketing.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said they have received no reports of human health problems in connection with the recall.

In addition, at Friday's press conference in Washington, Smith acknowledged that melamine may have made its way to a shipment of dry dog food, but the FDA is conducting further tests in cooperation with the company.

In a written statement, the Pet Food Institute, which represents the pet food industry, responded, "Any call at this time for a recall of dry pet food is clearly irresponsible. Neither state nor federal regulators have found any evidence whatsoever to support a recall of dry pet food products."

Menu Foods President and CEO Paul Henderson said he is confident no other product lines were contaminated with the tainted wheat gluten, and the company will not expand the recall to other products.

Menu Foods, of Ontario, recalled 60 million cans of wet pet food earlier this month after reports of sickened animals.

Since the recall began, the company has received more than 300,000 complaint calls from customers, Henderson said.

The news comes a week after the New York State Department of Agriculture and the Animal Health Diagnostic Center at Cornell University said a chemical used in rat poison was found in the recalled food.

Sundlof told reporters that additional experiments by several independent labs since then did not find the rodenticide in samples tested.

The Cornell center found the chemical aminopterin, a derivative of folic acid, in studies of several samples the recalled pet food.

Smith told reporters last week that the 14 pet deaths reported seemed low in light of information that's come to the center's attention during the investigation.

Menu Foods announced March 16 the original, precautionary recall of dog and cat food manufactured between December 3 and March 6.

That recall was limited to "cuts and gravy" style food in cans and pouches produced at the Kansas and New Jersey plants - which were subsequently temporarily closed by the company.

Menu Foods expanded the recall last week to include all brands of its "cuts and gravy" style pet food after the FDA reported that some retailers had not removed the originally recalled items from store shelves.

Also last week, a pet owner from Wisconsin filed a class action lawsuit against Menu Foods seeking unspecified damages after her cat became seriously ill from Menu Foods food.

Menu Foods would not comment on the lawsuit.

A list of the 42 cat food and 53 dog food products involved in the recall is online at www.menufoods.com/recall.

The recalled pet food is packaged under a wide variety of brand names and sold at a number of retailers including Kroger (up $0.25 to $28.25, Charts), Safeway (up $0.03 to $36.64, Charts), Wal-Mart (up $0.23 to $46.95, Charts), and at specialty pet stores like PetSmart (up $0.23 to $32.96, Charts) and Pet Valu (up $0.00 to $75.73, Charts).

CNN's Caleb Silver and Richard Davis contributed to this report.

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